Overpower

Overpower in action.

Overpower is a Might-class Barbarian skill unlocked at Level 26, which hits all enemies around the Barbarian with a powerful force, dealing damage and providing a variety of buffs courtesy of the rune effects.

This skill feels oddly un-barbaric at first, as it casts like a Wizard Nova attack, and is rather lacking in graphical punch. In fact, it's often hard to tell that it's been cast, with no visual component on the monsters and only a quick pillar of light from the Barbarian up to the heavens for a visual.

While the damage isn't a big deal compare to the Barbarian's variety of attack skills, the effect is as powerful as the visuals are not though, with the rune effects generating substantial bonuses to the Barbarian's various abilities.

Critical Hit Cooldown Reduction

Note that a Barbarian with high critical hit chance can reliably reduce the cooldown by quite a bit. The base cooldown is 15 seconds, but when cast in large crowds of enemies, with 8 or 10 or more monsters in range, a Barbarian can reliably knock 4 or 6 seconds off of that time, enabling this skill to be cast quite often, even to the point of keeping rune effects like Killing Spree and Crushing Advance in effect almost full time, at least during big battles with lots of enemies.

Post Release Changes

Patch v1.0.4 made no change to the base skill function, but did nerf one overpowered aspect of the Crushing Advance rune effect.[1] See that page for a detailed explanation of this nerf.

• Skill Rune – Crushing Advance
  • Can no longer trigger On Hit procs.
    • Amount of damage reflected increased from 30% to 35%.

Skill Rune Effects

The following is a very quick summary. See the Overpower rune effects page for a more thorough description of rune effects, or any of the individual rune pages for numbers, screenshots, blue quotes, and much more.

Icon	Name	Stats (Hover over)	Level Unlocked
	Killing Spree	(Stats)	23
	Storm of Steel	(Stats)	15
	Revel	(Stats)	49
	Momentum	(Stats)	39
	Crushing Advance	(Stats)	32

Skill Design

While the tool tip is very vague, Overpower is a spell-like ability, not a weapon swinging melee attack. It calls down a bolt from the heavens in the base form. The area of effect is over a nearby radius, as can be seen in the video below.

Synergies

The following Barbarian passives provide a benefit to Overpower, runed or not:

• Bloodthirst - The Barbarian gains life based on the amount of damage he deals always.
• Ruthless - Increases critical hit chance and critical hit damage always.
• Weapons Master - Provides a damage bonus when the Barbarian is wielding a sword or dagger. Increases critical hit chance when the Barbarian is wielding a mace or axe.
• Berserker Rage - Inflicts additional damage while the Barbarian is at maximum Fury.
• Brawler - Increases the Barbarian's damage when he is swarmed.

Development

Overpower was first seen in the skill list at the July 2011 Press Event, where it was a level 19 skill. Skill tiers were removed for that event, allowing skills to unlock steadily from levels 1 to 30. Unfortunately, no information about the skill's function was available.

Beta

The Diablo III Beta started in September 2011, and while it ran, all of the skills continued to undergo extensive iteration. Skill changes varied from changing the levels the skills are unlocked, to changes in resource cost, damage, and even function. A few skills were removed altogether, and a few new ones were added. Also, the entire skill system received an overhaul with the Beta Patch 13 update in February 2012, with physical runes replaced by rune effects that automatically unlock at various levels for the different skills.

Overpower was moved to level 18 for the beta. With the Patch 13 changes, it was classified as a Might skill (but stayed at level 18). For the Beta Patch 14, it was bumped up to level 26.

Media

Overpower can be seen in action on video here:

• No videos yet.

You can find pictures in the Diablo III screenshot and picture gallery:

• Diablo III screenshots and pictures
• Overpower specific gallery contents

References

• Zediono's translation of JudgeHype's pre-beta report — IncGamers 1st Aug 2011
• Silva's Barbarian Runestone Effects — IncGamers 6th Sep 2011
• Barbarian Active Skills — Blizzard's Official Diablo III Site

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